Teen Girls Get Scary Diagnosis: Is ‘Mass Hysteria’ Real?

A dozen high school girls in upstate New York are suffering from a
variety of scary-sounding symptoms, from tics to unexplained pain to
Tourette's-like verbal outbursts.

School officials and doctors looked
for environmental causes or infectious contamination, but found nothing
to explain what's happening to the 12 afflicted girls at Le Roy high
school. Last week, they were given an official diagnosis: "mass
hysteria." Say what?

It sounds like something out of an old “B” movie, but Dr. David Reiss, MD, the Interim Medical Director of Providence Behavioral Health Hospital, says that mass hysteria is indeed something real.

Reiss explains that mass hysteria is also known as “conversion disorder” — which essentially means that the symptoms clearly have no physical causes, but they are nonetheless very real. Conversion is related to somatization (physical symptoms caused or exaggerated by psychological problems); Reiss says the difference is that with somatization, there is generally a physiological basis for the symptoms, which are then exacerbated due to psychological factors.

So what causes conversion disorders, and how can they happen on a large scale? “If you look at what’s happening with conversion, it’s really a reaction to stress or emotional conflict,” says Reiss. A person suffering from a conversion disorder is expressing internal pain, like extreme anxiety or trauma, though physical symptoms. That’s not at all to say it’s all “in her head” — Reiss says the experiences and pain of someone with a disorder like that are very real.

“When you take people who are under a certain amount of stress, especially if it’s being encouraged by peers or serves some kind of purpose, like gaining the person attention, then it can escalate,” Reiss says. With a full-blown conversion, says Reiss, usually there’s something significant going on with the sufferer, psychologically speaking.

With a “mass” hysteria — when conversion disorder happens on a large scale — as with the girls at Le Roy, basically they are “catching” it, so to speak, from each other. Reiss compares a conversion disorder to being in a hypnotic, or highly suggestible state. In fact, he says, most of us experience something similar, but on a much smaller scale, to this all the time: when you get lost in a movie, or you cough because someone in your office coughs, or feel itchy when you hear someone at your school has lice — those are all example of minor (and perfectly normal) conversion-like behaviors.

“We empathize with each other, we react,” says Reiss. When you hear someone is sick, you might worry, “Is it going to happen to me?” Typically, that reaction only lasts for a little while. With a mass conversion disorder, however, that fear or concern or imagined symptom turns into a diagnosable disorder that causes real symptoms and significant life disruption.

“We’re all somewhat suggestible, we can all be influenced by others” says Reiss, but this is particularly true of adolescents, and even more true of adolescent girls, generally speaking.

“When boys experience hysteria, they tend to act out more behaviorally,” says Reiss — they’ll exhibit violent or macho behaviors, as opposed to being sick. “Also, girls at that age are going though very significant changes in their bodies, so they’re going to be more aware of their bodies, their physical sensations,” says Reiss. Add that to the fact that girls are often more comfortable closely identifying with their peers, and that, Reiss theorizes, could explain why they are more susceptible to a mass conversion disorder.

So when is empathy just empathy, and when is it something to worry about? “If it becomes disruptive or very worrisome to you,” says Reiss, “talk to someone you trust, not to someone else who’s going to be equally as susceptible — a parent, a teacher, a doctor.” If you do find yourself overreacting often, says Reiss, don’t worry too much, but it’s a good idea to talk to a professional to put your mind at ease. “It’s not pathological to empathize with others,” Reiss explains. “You just don’t want to go overboard, or let it become disruptive.”